Miss Ahern's School

Miss Alice M. Ahern, one of the earlier women graduates (1914) of Trinity College Dublin, operated a private primary school in a Victorian house called Ormiston, located on The Hill, opposite the Church of Ireland Church in Malahide. Rather unusually for the time, it was open to boys and girls, both Catholic and protestant.

Miss Ahern herself was quite short and she dressed in Victorian style, always wearing a large brooch. She usually had one or two younger helpers. Her elderly brother lived somewhere in the house and we children were called occasionally to help push his car out onto the hill.

There were probably 40 or 50 pupils when I attended around 1945-49. The most junior class had its room at the top of the house. My teacher there was a Miss May. The main classroom was on the first floor, in a large room with several rows of desks. Miss Ahern used to circulate between desks, supervising and teaching individually, according to the Frobel method (or her interpretation thereof).

French classes were held downstairs in the dining room, a heavily decorated Victorian room with small family photographs all around the walls. Sometimes there would be an art appreciation class, when a colour reproduction would be put up, and we had to describe its features.

Places in class were awarded according to effort rather than performance, so that everybody had a chance to be top. At the end of the year everybody got a prize of some kind.

There was an annual sports day with items like sack, egg-and-spoon and three-legged races, high and long jumps andrunning.

After leaving Ireland I lost touch with ex-Miss Ahern pupils, except for my siblings. Some of them were later students at Trinity College.

One little incident I remember and that was about Penny Michael, the youngest child of the local doctor. She was too young to come to school, unlike her sisters, but one day she came anyway and refused to go home. There was a great deal of wailing as her sisters persuaded her to leave! She is now the wife of the famous rugby player, Willie John McBride.

In the very first class we had religious education once each week. An elderly clergyman used to come and read nightmarish passages from The Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan.